LOUISVILLE – This is how the soup gets made.
The All Agency Review Committee is spending three days – Jan. 22-24 – with its members sitting in a conference room at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national offices in downtown Louisville, figuring out what to include in their report to the 2018 General Assembly. These folks came supplied with subgroup reports and lists, coffee and chocolate, and an unrelenting deadline of Feb. 16 to submit their report to the Office of the General Assembly.
On the meeting’s first day, committee members talked for hours about everything from the value of openness to the standing rules governing the General Assembly to resurrection.
The committee held a conference call with two other groups also cooking soup: the 2020 Vision Team (meeting Jan. 21-23 in Dallas) and the Way Forward Commission, which met Jan. 17-19 in Seattle and whose moderator, Mark Hostetter, participated in the call.
J. Herbert Nelson, the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, joined … [Read more...]

The All Agency Review Committee is getting ready for its next in-person meeting in Louisville Jan. 22-24 – a meeting during which the committee hopes to draft its recommendations to the 2018 General Assembly.
In preparation for that, the committee met by video conference call Jan. 11– running through some of the elements it wants to address in that report. It likely will include recommendations regarding shared services; the structure of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) A Corporation; communications and the PC(USA) website; and whether there should be one mission statement under which the six agencies of the PC(USA) “operate and cooperate,” as Deborah Block, a pastor from Wisconsin who serves as moderator of All Agency Review, put it.
Block said she plans to attend the meeting in Seattle Jan. 17-19 of the Way Forward Commission – saying she expects there will be some things the two groups likely will jointly endorse and “some things where we will have a distinctive … [Read more...]

Step by step, the groups working on big-picture reports to the 2018 General Assembly are getting closer to nailing down their recommendations.
Those reports are due by Feb. 16, 2018. The All Agency Review Committee met by conference call Dec. 6, circulating for that meeting a very preliminary draft of an outline the committee may use to shape its report – basically, it’s a starting point for the writing team.
While specific recommendations have yet to emerge, committee members said they would like to find a way – along with the Way Forward Commission – to make sure that commissioners to the 2018 General Assembly have opportunities before the assembly begins to become familiar with those groups’ reports and their complexities.
For All Agency Review, there’s a lot that could go into the report. There’s the idea of whether mission directives built around the language of openness, taken from section F-1.0404 in the Book of Order, could be used as a way of evaluating the work of … [Read more...]

It’s all still in process – meeting after meeting happening across the church about the future of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
On Oct. 24, the Way Forward Commission met for three hours. On Oct. 27, the All Agency Review Committee took its turn (both of those meetings by conference call). While recommendations from those groups to the 2018 General Assembly have yet to emerge, the conversations give glimpses into the big issues being debated at the top levels of the church.
Presbyterian Mission Agency. The agency submitted a revision of its response to a series of questions All Agency Review posed about “openness.” The questions asked how the concept of openness (drawn from section F-1.0404 in the Book of Order) might be used as a central theme or “mission directive” for the denomination. All of the PC(USA)'s six agencies had submitted responses for the committee’s Oct. 9-10 meeting in St. Louis, but PMA had asked for a little more time to do a better job in its answers – … [Read more...]

ST. LOUIS – The All Agency Review Committee is looking ahead and getting more specific about changes it might recommend – including possible changes in the rules for how a General Assembly handles business brought to it at the last minute via commissioners’ resolutions.
The committee talked at its meeting in St. Louis Oct. 10 about what changes it might recommend to the standing rules so that the six agencies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have a better chance to comment on business that comes to the General Assembly at the last minute – particularly commissioners’ resolutions.
The reason: Sometimes that business can have significant implications – either financially or in terms of staff time or focus – for the way the agencies do their work.
Robert’s Rules of Order does require that a member of a representative assembly have the opportunity to bring new business to that assembly, said Jim Wilson, an All Agency Review member who’s also a lawyer who has served on the … [Read more...]

ST. LOUIS – What are the “perils and possibilities” ahead for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?
Why does lament resonate so deeply in the PC(USA) at this time – apparently striking a deeper chord than joy?
How can the idea of openness (drawn from section F-1.0404 in the Book of Order) be used as a central theme or “mission directive” for the denomination?
These are some of the questions the All Agency Review Committee – charged with making a report to the 2018 General Assembly about the interactions of the six agencies and the “church as a whole” – discussed on the first day of its Oct. 9-10 meeting in St. Louis.
All Agency Review asked each of the six PC(USA) agencies to respond to a series of questions regarding the concept of openness – and the responses led to a robust discussion, covering everything from a proposal to increase the per capita rate to efforts to make Board of Pensions medical coverage available to those in ministry who are not serving full-time … [Read more...]